Industrial Revolution Carlos Cipolla Summary

Before the Industrial Revolution covers a 700 year era of European history that wrangles loads of information into a compact assesment that susses out discernable patterns in demographic and economic trends to establish a portrait of pre-industrial existence. The author Carlos Cipolla takes an economists approach, using statistics to frame a historical narrative in which the industrial revolution emerges as the result of gradual changes in the markets, technologies, and cultures of Europe. This book does not present any grand arguments, rather it sets to first elaborate on the details of what Europe was like in a rounded sense, and second, reason to explain how different circumstances culminated with the Industrial Revolution. The book is structured in two parts, 'Static Approximation ' and 'Toward a Dynamic Description ', each employing slightly different method and delivery. The former uses a wealth of tables and statistics alongside corroborative research to explain the intricacies of population, demand, and production. This section is rife with statistics that have been drawn from an array of sources, which Cipolla states in some cases are not to be taken strictly, but instead as estimations that are intended as part of a generalized picture, …show more content…
The average person was poor, living at barely subsistance level (18), but in terms of consumer demand they differed only from the wealthy in terms of volume and extravagance (37). Economic uncertainty and the lack of complex banking systems left savings, if possible, relatively inert (42-5) until dynamic coinage systems increased the prevelance and liquidity of money (200), and the mechanisms of investment that fueled maritime trade could inject profits into the proto-industries of Europe (194-7,